


Good Mourning

by sana



Category: Wild Adapter
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, possibly squicky descriptions of death and decomposition
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-04 12:12:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3067376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sana/pseuds/sana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU based (loosely) on Minekura Kazuya's "Honeycomb."  After a devastating earthquake, '90s Tokyo is no place for the living.  Kubota Makoto and Komiya Nobuo are underpaid civil servants who transport the bodies of the dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, this is my first Wild Adapter fic, and actually it's the first fic I've bothered to post to AO3... although I've been a Minekura fan for years. This is an AU based loooosely on one of Minekura's one-shot manga, "Honeycomb" (I mixed in a lot of other things, too, like Ono Fuyumi's "Shiki" and bits of "Saiyuki"... well, you'll see ♡) This first chapter leaves a lot of the background unsaid, but I think you'll be able to put it together quickly (haha). There will be shipping, I promise... my rare OTP needs some love.
> 
> Thanks to Nala for beta reading, and for inspiring me to try to write Kubota!

**Wednesday, September 6th, 1995, 10:15 AM  
Sugita Residence, Taishido, Setagaya Ward**

The smell of death was overpowering.

The stale air of the apartment was heavy and sickly sweet, with an underlying bitterness that clawed at the senses while the sweetness choked. Komiya pressed his sleeve over his mouth and nose, but the cheap polyester fabric did little to block the stench. Death invaded his body with every breath.

Shit... he was going to puke like a rookie out on his first assignment.

The middle-aged woman who'd opened the door to the tomb looked back at him with a lifeless gaze. There were moth holes in the collar of her faded black kimono, and her face was pale and drawn. She reminded Komiya of his mother, even though she was a good twenty years older and her greying hair was dark where his mother's was bleached blonde. The resemblance was all in the eyes.

"Sugita Setsuko-san? We're the..." He tried to speak, but the invisible hand of death had grabbed him by the throat. He pressed a hand over his mouth and tasted bile and convenience store curry on the back of his tongue.

"We're the Welcomers."

Kubota's voice was calm. As he stepped into the doorway, the oversized cardboard box in his arms momentarily blocked the light from outside and offered Komiya a half-second of darkness to wipe his mouth on his sleeve. Neither of them bothered to remove their shoes at the entranceway - Welcomer policy forbid it - but given the worn state of the tatami mats on the floor, it wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway. Komiya followed the woman into the main room while Kubota struggled to maneuver his box through the narrow entrance hallway.

The apartment was tiny, with just one main room that served double duty as sleeping and living quarters, and the walls bore deep cracks from the Quake back in '85. Ten years later, they hadn't been repaired, and now there was black mold from water damage on the exposed plaster. A broken sliding door to the back alley had been covered by a plastic tarp, which might have been an invitation to thieves had there been anything at all in the place worth taking. The building was a corpse, too, and even thieves instinctively avoided the taint of death.

The woman sank to her knees on the floor, next to a bloated shape that was wrapped up like a spring roll in an old sleeping futon. Brown stains had already seeped through the fabric and into the tatami. The putrid stench was stronger now, and its source was obvious. Komiya hesitated in the entrance hall until Kubota bumped against him and his soft voice whispered in his ear.

"That one's probably been laying there for three days," he commented, as casually as if he were discussing the unseasonably hot September weather.

"Maybe a little less in this heat," Komiya muttered back, wondering how many decomposing corpses Kubota had seen. It was only Kubota's third day on the job, and Komiya knew nothing of his new partner's past, or why he'd chosen to go into this line of work. _Nobody_ became a Welcomer if they had other options. The Welcomers took ex-cons and gang members, foreigners without papers, and kids who hadn't finished school. If you had a strong back and could lift 40 kilos, you were hired, no questions asked.

But Kubota Makoto was Japanese (probably). His speech had a certain refined, educated quality, with what Komiya thought could be a slight trace of a Kyoto accent. He looked to be somewhere between 18 and 20, so he was probably too young to have done hard time. With his shaggy hair and delicate wire-frame glasses, he looked more like a college student than a gang member. Maybe, like Komiya, he'd been born into this line of work.

 _But_ , Komiya thought with a new wave of nausea that had nothing to do with the stench of the rotting body, after what he'd seen Kubota do the other day... he couldn't put anything past him.

Kubota shrugged in silent acquiescence. After all, it didn't really matter how long the corpse had been laying out in this sweltering, stifling apartment. "Well, you can check for rigor mortis if you want, but..." Kubota trailed off, eyeing the blanket-wrapped corpse. Welcomer policy was to check the degree of stiffness in the muscles to gauge the approximate time of cardiac death. The small muscles of the face tensed within two or three hours, followed by the knees and elbows. By six hours, the shoulders and hips would lock. The hands were usually the last to stiffen, sometimes taking eight to twelve hours to go completely rigid. After eighteen to twenty-four hours, the muscles would gradually slacken as the body started to putrefy. The futon-wrapped body had obviously started to decompose, so as Kubota had said, it had most likely been laying in this room for about three days. Seventy-two hours, more or less.

 _Shit_. This meant they'd have to fill out _paperwork_.

The woman's dull eyes flicked towards them as they whispered, but she remained as still as the corpse that lay in front of her. "I know it's been too long," she said finally in a hollow-sounding tone. "When he didn't wake up, I... I didn't know who else to call." A black housefly landed on her cheek, but she barely flinched.

"...Right." Komiya breathed carefully through his mouth, trying not to imagine the taste of the fetid air. He pulled a folded itinerary from his jacket pocket and scanned through the list of the morning's assignments. "A Sugita Setsuko called in at 7:45 this morning to report the death of her husband, Sugita Tatsuo, age 59, in the early hours of the morning. Sugita-san, could you put your name stamp on this form? Thanks."

The woman - Sugita Setsuko - stared at him blankly and said nothing.

"Um... if you can't find your stamp, a signature is okay, too." Komiya managed to find a partially chewed ballpoint pen in his pocket, which he handed to her. As she reached for the pen, the threadbare sleeve of her mourning kimono slid to reveal pale, waxy skin. Sugita Setsuko had called the Funeral Welcomers at 7:45, and it was almost half past ten now... they were supposed to have the body to the crematorium by noon, but now there was going to be paperwork and the rest of the day’s pickups would need to be pushed back. Komiya sighed.

Kubota laid the man-sized cardboard box next to the corpse and opened it, spreading the black plastic liner. They'd have to throw down a couple of old newspapers in the back of the hearse, just in case there were leaks. Once the smell of death got into the carpeting, it was almost impossible to remove.

"Your husband..." Komiya began again, hesitating. "He's been dead for a while, right?"

Sugita Setsuko didn't blink. The black fly crawled across her cheek, tasting the dry tracks of her tears. "He... he died on Sunday. I'm sorry I didn't call sooner, but... I thought..." She trailed off.

"Um... I see. You know you're supposed to report all deaths to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government within six hours, right?"

Of course she knew that. Everybody knew that. There were public service announcement posters in every convenience store window, and advertisements on the TV and radio. The Funeral Welcomers were the last vestige of a functioning government, and even in the condemned areas of the city, they boasted response times that were usually faster than that of police or ambulance services (which Komiya suspected had something to do with the fact that Welcomer agencies were rarely concerned with whether their employees had valid driver's licenses).

The Funeral Welcomers would be there to take your loved one on their last great journey. That journey was a bumpy ride in the back of an old station wagon that had been hastily painted black to serve as a hearse, and the destination was the nearest crematorium. New laws, rapidly pushed into action by the National Public Safety Commission in the weeks after the Quake of '85, mandated cremation within a maximum of twelve hours after death... and strict penalties for those who failed to comply.

Setsuko nodded slowly and bowed her head. "I know. I'm sorry. Please, Shinigami-san..."

Komiya's lips twitched into a thin smile at the name. The law that required deaths to be reported within six hours left little time for an old-fashioned wake or Buddhist funeral rituals. Most of the priests had relocated out of Tokyo after the quarantine went into effect. Instead, the Funeral Welcomers - government-contracted laborers in cheap black suits, with black plastic prayer beads wrapped around their wrists - were trained to recite a few prayers before they boxed and loaded the deceased for that final short journey. And so the Funeral Welcomers were popularly known as "shinigami," or "gods of death." They were often called worse things, of course. Komiya had heard them all.

"I, um... I'm supposed to turn you over to the police for not reporting a death, you know..." The woman didn't look up. The penalty for non-reporting was usually a hefty fine, or up to several years of jail time for those who couldn't pay. Judging by the state of the apartment, there was no way that Sugita Setsuko would be able to afford the fine. By the time the cops showed up to take her to a holding facility, she'd most likely be hanging from the light fixture in the same room her husband had died in. And then Komiya and Kubota would have another corpse to transport, and more paperwork to fill out.

Kubota shook a cigarette from his pack and dangled it, unlit, from his lips. "No harm's been done, though," he noted vaguely. "Right? This guy isn't going anywhere." The new shinigami idly played with his lighter as he stood by the cardboard coffin. Smoking on the job was technically prohibited, but Komiya hadn't seen the other man go more than a few minutes without lighting a fresh cigarette. Komiya usually ignored the rule and smoked in the car, but tobacco was too expensive in the Tokyo Exclusion Zone for him to go through cigarettes the way Kubota did. He'd heard that Kubota made decent money gambling on mahjong - decent enough to afford a pack or two of Seven Stars a day, anyway - so there was no reason for him to be working as a shinigami. "If we wrap the box real tight with duct tape," Kubota continued conversationally, "nobody at the crematorium will notice. That place already smells pretty weird as it is."

"You just don't wanna fill out the paperwork..." Komiya grumbled, but secretly, he was relieved. Kubota was his junior at the company, even though they were about the same age, and he was supposed to set a good example during Kubota's first week on the job. If he'd set a better example for his last partner, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe he never would have met Kubota Makoto. "Okay, okay, we don't have to get the cops involved. Just... uh... don't do it again, okay?" Komiya smiled, but there was no relief in Sugita Setsuko's eyes. He wondered if she had any loved ones left to mourn.

Well, whatever. They were already behind schedule, and they couldn't afford to lose any more time. They had another body to pick up in Shibuya, and if they made decent time they could get both to the crematorium by noon and still have time to grab ramen at Yoshinoya.

" _Namu amida butsu_... or something like that." Kubota recited the perfunctory prayer and went down on one knee to grab hold of the futon's unsoiled corners. Komiya nodded and took the other side. As expected, rigor mortis had passed and the body inside sagged heavily when they tried to lift it. With a grunt of effort, they managed to hoist it into the plastic-lined cardboard box. Kubota closed the box and secured it with duct tape from the roll he wore around his wrist, while Komiya separated the carbon copy of the form bearing Sugita Setsuko's signature and taped it to the lid of the makeshift coffin. Navigating the narrow entrance hallway with the box would be tricky, but at least it was a ground floor unit so they didn't have to worry about stairs.

"On the count of three?" Komiya asked as he took hold of a cardboard handle.

"Yeah. One, two..."

"Wait! Please... what am I supposed to do now?" Setsuko's whisper was barely audible. The tears that trickled slowly down her face were the only sign of life in the tomb-like apartment. She had his mother's eyes, thought Komiya.

"Um... your husband's name will be added to the official registry of the dead, and the head of the National Temple in Kyoto will perform mass funeral rites... you'll get a memorial postcard within 6-8 weeks." Together, he and Kubota lifted the box.

"That's it?"

Komiya nodded his head in the best approximation of a formal bow that he could manage while supporting half the weight of a coffin. "...Sorry for your loss." There was no sound from the woman until they'd successfully made it through the hallway and closed the front door. As the lock clicked behind them, Komiya thought he could hear the muffled sound of sobbing.

"We'll probably be back here soon," he sighed.

"...Yeah."

 

**Wednesday, September 6th, 1995, 11:20 AM  
Ogata Residence, Daikanyama, Shibuya Ward**

Broken asphalt crunched under the tires as the hearse pulled up to a two-story house in the residential neighborhood of Daikanyama. Ten years ago, Daikanyama had been a trendy area full of upscale boutiques and cafes, the residential area of choice for young professionals who aspired to the lifestyle of nearby Aoyama but who couldn't afford Aoyama rents. Now, ten years after the Quake, shattered glass from shop windows still littered the ground in places.

"Shit, it smells even worse now," Komiya moaned, hanging his head out the driver's side window. They'd made good time through the streets of central Tokyo (cars were less common now, and everybody pulled over for a Welcomer's black hearse), but the cloying stink of the decomposing corpse in the back came back with renewed vigor as soon as they slowed to a stop. The late summer sun that pounded incessantly on their black car wasn’t helping the matter. “I’m going to need to get this suit dry cleaned. Or maybe I’ll just burn it.”

“Mm. I want a shower.” Komiya blinked, slightly startled. Most of his “conversations” with Kubota Makoto consisted of him talking and Kubota occasionally responding with a noncommittal noise. If not for the haze of cigarette smoke that Kubota had quickly surrounded himself with, he wouldn't have guessed that the smell bothered him at all.

"Yeah, me too," he agreed a moment later. The heat had glued Komiya's collar to his neck, and he paused to loosen his tie. He craved a smoke, but his own pack had run out and he couldn't afford more cigarettes until payday. "Come on, then. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can dump this guy and grab some lunch."

The house was a squat, modernist block of white concrete that had probably looked dated ten minutes after the paint dried, but at least it had escaped the worst of the earthquake damage. Apart from a few cracks, the exterior seemed to be intact. Upscale areas like Daikanyama had been virtually deserted after the Quake, though. Everybody who could afford to move took the buyout checks and left Tokyo as quickly as they could, sometimes leaving behind fully furnished apartments. Even the seat of the national government had been relocated to Kyoto.

The people living in Daikanyama now were squatters. The trendy boutiques had long ago been stripped of anything of value, and had been repurposed into shops that sold stolen goods and expired government rations. Shibuya Ward had become a republic of thieves, and the Welcomers were there to take the one thing that no one wanted. Komiya knocked on the door while Kubota retrieved the second corrugated cardboard box from the back of the station wagon.

The knock was answered by a thin, anxious-looking man in his mid-thirties. Komiya fumbled through his pockets until he found his itinerary.

"Um… Ogata Kengo-san, right?"

"Yeah." Ogata moved out of the doorway so Kubota could maneuver the coffin inside. "Thank god you're here. I didn't know what to do. My girlfriend took a bad fall down the stairs this morning and hit her head... I called the hotline right away, but I've been freaking out. Y'know, from grief and all."

"It's okay, everybody freaks out," Komiya replied in what he hoped was a reassuring tone. Sometimes, the relatives of the deceased would grab him and cry, which was always awkward. He glanced quickly around the spacious house. It had probably been pretty swank ten years ago, but now the white carpets were tracked with filth and piles of trash, mostly old clothing, had been scattered across the floor. Maybe there was supposed to be some order to the piles, but Komiya couldn't figure it out. He did recognized a few designer labels among the old clothing, though. Ogata and his girlfriend had probably been looters.

Although no one had bothered to do a census recently, it was usually estimated that Tokyo's post-Quake population was less than 20% of its former level. There were tens of thousands of abandoned buildings. Most residential buildings had already been stripped of high-value items, but there was still plenty left to steal. Sure-footed thieves could scale their way to the top floors of tilting, half-collapsed apartment complexes and still hope to find untouched rooms.

If Ogata's girlfriend had been a looter, then it was hard to believe that she'd die from a fall down the stairs of her own home.

Komiya shook his head. Whatever. He wasn't paid enough to ask questions. He handed the pickup form to Ogata, who had to rummage through a kitchen drawer for a moment to find his official name stamp. Once the form was stamped, Komiya separated the carbon layers and handed the pink copy to Kubota, who taped it to the lid of the coffin.

"Hanamura... Isabela?" There was only space on the form for kanji names, so "Isabela" had been scrawled in narrow katakana. "Weird name," Kubota remarked distantly.

Ogata rubbed his scratched cheek and grinned. "Yeah, she was a foreigner - half Brazilian, half Japanese. The fiery type, you know? Hot but crazy. She used to scream at me in Portuguese, like I had any fucking clue what she was saying. Women, right? You guys know how it is."

Komiya kept his face blank as he folded the stamped form and slipped it into his suit pocket. Hanamura Isabela must have been a descendent of one of the many Japanese who'd emigrated to Brazil before the Second World War. In the '80s, thousands of Brazil-born "dekasegi" moved to Japan, seeking work and a connection with their cultural roots... but even those who looked Japanese and spoke Japanese were shunned as second-class citizens and stigmatized as criminals. Even now, they carried the weight of what their grandparents and great-grandparents had done.

"Oh?" asked Kubota in a tone of mild curiosity. "So she's a _returner_ , then?" Komiya jumped a little at the word. That wasn’t a word you said casually anymore, not since the Quake...

Ogata visibly tensed. "...In the sense that she returned from Brazil, I guess." Kubota looked vaguely amused, but his expressions were as hard to read as a cat's. Maybe that faint smile was a predatory look.

They followed Ogata into the western-style living room. There were dark stains on the carpet, which Ogata ignored as he kicked aside piles of clothing to make room for the coffin. Isabela was laid out on the couch, covered by an old '80s designer coat. Komiya held his breath and carefully pulled back the coat.

There was a deep, discolored gash across one side of the woman's forehead, but her naturally tanned skin was pale and there was very little swelling around the wound. She must have died within minutes of receiving it. He began to check her rigor mortis, starting with the hands. Her arms were strangely frozen, as if even in death she was trying to push something away. Komiya had seen bodies locked by rigor into awkward positions during his time as a Welcomer, which made it hard to cram them into a standard-size cardboard box. Sometimes, when a person died sitting up or curled on their side, the shinigami would just wrap them up in a black garbage bag.

Normally, though, the limbs went slack for a few hours after death, and rigor only set in gradually. Ogata claimed that Isabela had died that morning - just a few hours ago. Her hands shouldn't have locked up yet. Uneasy, Komiya glanced backed to his partner, who was watching with an expression of intense interest.

"This is weird. I can't determine the time of death..."

"Instantaneous rigor," Kubota said softly. "Neat. That's really rare."

"Huh? What are you talking about?"

Kubota adjusted his glasses. "Relaxing the muscles takes energy, in the form of adenosine triphosphate."

"Adeno-what?"

"ATP for short. It's a molecule."

Komiya had dropped out during his last year of senior high, and he hadn't really paid much attention during the first two years. Science had been one of his worst subjects, although the rest had been pretty bad, too. "Okaaay."

"Usually, when a person dies, there's enough free ATP floating around the body to allow the muscles to relax. But once that ATP is gone, the muscles start to contract automatically, and you get rigor mortis. The muscles stay locked up until decomposition sets in."

"Yeah, that makes sense. So what happened here? Either she's been dead for at least eight hours, or..."

"Instantaneous rigor. Somebody who's struggling for their life can burn through all of their free ATP, which leaves the muscles frozen at the moment of death."

The realization that _this_ was the longest conversation he'd managed to have with Kubota Makoto was simultaneously kind of creepy and kind of funny. Komiya tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle a snort of laughter. "...How do you know all this stuff?"

Kubota shrugged. "It was in the employee handbook."

"Liar. Nobody reads the employee handbook."

If what Kubota said was true, then there was no way that this woman just "fell down the stairs." In her last moments, she'd been fighting. Komiya fingered the stylish silk scarf around Hanamura Isabela's neck. It was a strange choice of accessory. Even with the air conditioner rattling at full blast the house was uncomfortably warm, and Komiya's own tie was starting to feel like a noose. Suspicious, he tugged on the scarf.

Isabela's neck was ringed with purplish bruises that stood out, livid, against the deathly pallor of her skin. She may have received the blow to the head before she died, but the cause of her death was strangulation.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing!?" Ogata demanded, fear forcing the pitch of his voice to a reedy whine. "Just get on with it!" Kubota shrugged and began to spread the coffin's plastic liner, but Komiya hesitated. There'd been a murder... weren't they supposed to call the police? The Super Sentai? _Somebody?_

"You... you killed her." Komiya spoke softly, but Ogata recoiled like he'd been punched in the mouth.

"So what? You think the cops give a shit about some undocumented immigrant girl? It's just paperwork to them. By the time they get around to an investigation, she'll be ash. No body, no evidence, no crime." Swearing under his breath, Ogata pulled a wallet from his back pocket and pulled out a single crumpled 10000-yen bill. "Is this what you fucking want?"

Kubota shrugged again, but he wordlessly took the money and slipped it into his jacket. Everything Ogata said was true, and they all knew it. 10000 yen would buy a lot of ramen and cigarettes... and it was apparently enough to buy a person's life. Komiya's hand tensed into a fist.

"Just hurry up," Ogata snapped.

"In a rush?" There was a certain sharpness in Kubota's eyes, although they were veiled by shaggy black hair. "If she died this morning, then we have plenty of time." Komiya was about to object that the _other_ corpse rotting in the back of their car wasn't getting any fresher, but he bit his tongue. Kubota had said more in the past five minutes than in the past five days. The words were like bubbles on the surface of deep, dark water - a sign that something terrible was about to rise from the depths.

"I told you to hurry the fuck up!"

Ignoring the man, Kubota turned to Komiya with a bland smile. "It hasn't even been six hours since she died. We could probably stop for ramen on the way to the crematorium."

"Nah, let's get beef bowls," Komiya answered, playing along.

"Fuck..." Ogata ran his fingers through thinning hair. "I... I was studying for the med school entrance exams before the Quake, okay? I know about rigor mortis. The 12-hour window is based on the normal stages of rigor mortis, but instantaneous rigor changes the biochemistry of the body."

"What does that mean?"

"...I've heard that the safe period can be cut in half."

Komiya's jaw dropped. "Six hours?" he managed to croak. "Maybe that's why they say murder victims are more likely to..."

"I guess we'd better hurry up then," Kubota interjected calmly.

Together, they lifted Isabela's stiff corpse into the cardboard coffin. Six hours... if Ogata was right, then they'd barely make it to the crematorium in time. Maybe they could buy some lighter fluid from a convenience store and burn her in the parking lot. Gripping the handles of the coffin tightly, Komiya backed towards the door. Ogata hadn't locked it when they came in, but he still had to strain to hold his side of the coffin with one hand while he fumbled with the doorknob.

"Come on, let's get... fuck!" Something hard and metallic pinged off the doorframe, inches from Komiya's head. He let go of the coffin, which thudded onto the pavement with enough force to dent one corner of the corrugated box. "We've got company!"

He jumped over the coffin and ducked behind the doorway, but with the heavy box in the way, they couldn't close the door. Not that there was much point. A battered old van had just rolled up next to their hearse. Four people - two men and two women - climbed out.

Even if they managed to shut the door, their attackers would just smash one of the windows. Construction had been cheap during the bubble economy years, and Komiya knew from a youth spent breaking and entering that it didn't take much force to break locks or pop window frames. Police response times in Shibuya were half an hour on a good day, and Komiya had a feeling that this wasn't a good day.

"They must have followed us from Setagaya... shit. I bet they could smell us the whole way." Komiya pressed his body against the wall while Kubota did the same on the other side of the doorway. "Four of them. They're definitely _returners_."

Komiya hadn't seen the faces of their attackers, but he knew what he'd see in their eyes: the bright, inhuman gold color that marked them as returners. Only someone like Kubota would dare say that word in any other context. After the Quake, the Japanese term, “kikansha,” had become so taboo that everyone used the English word.

 _Returners_. People who came back, whether they were welcomed or not.

"Returners!?" Ogata gasped. "What are we going to do now!?"

"I wonder," murmured Kubota as he pulled a wicked-looking semiautomatic pistol from inside his jacket. Komiya reached for his own gun, a old police-issue Beretta.

Shinigami didn't just wear black suits out of respect for the dead. After the Quake, the Japanese government had loosened the ban on firearms and allowed official Funeral Welcomers to carry handguns. The shapeless, ill-fitting black jackets were ideal for concealing weapons.

"I think only one of them has a gun." Even unarmed, returners were stronger and faster than normal humans. Their reflective golden eyes allowed them to see in low light, even in the condemned areas of the city where the power grid had failed.

"So we're outnumbered, then." Kubota's lips twisted into a thin smile. There was something terrifyingly predatory about it. "But not outgunned." He darted around the doorframe and took a shot at the closest returner.

The woman's gold eyes went wide and she staggered back, clutching a stomach wound that was already coloring the fabric of her shirt. Despite all the urban legends about returners having black blood, Komiya had seen enough of it to know that it was as red as his own. The returner woman stumbled, but didn't fall, and Kubota let out a soft sigh of disappointment. Anything less than a direct shot to the head or heart wouldn't kill them, but it would at least slow them down for the few hours they needed to heal. Komiya knew that he wasn't nearly as good with a gun, but soon the returners would be close enough that it wouldn't matter.

Returners wouldn't pass up the chance to kill a pair of shinigami. Although the sound of his own pulse thundered in his ears, Komiya was dimly aware of Ogata screaming in the background. They'd probably kill him, too. Why not?

Kubota took another shot, this time catching one of the male returners in the thigh. A human would bleed out in minutes from a wound like that, but for a returner, it was just a painful inconvenience. Komiya tried for a potshot at the man while he was distracted by pain, but his reflexes were still too quick.

"Damn it!" Komiya cursed as he ducked back behind the doorframe. The returners were only a few meters from the house now, and they were closing fast. "Kubota, I..."

He wanted to apologize. If he hadn't been such a goddamned coward, if he hadn't been such a goddamned idiot, then Kubota would never have had to become a shinigami. Kubota didn't belong here. Kubota was...

Suddenly there was a dull thump from inside the coffin that still blocked the doorway, followed by a muffled shriek of terror. Then came the sound of frantic scratching. In their haste, Kubota had secured the lid of the coffin with its built-in cardboard tabs instead of tape, so it didn't take long for the corrugated paper to give way.

Hanamura Isabela scrambled unsteadily to her feet, blinking her gold eyes in terror. She looked down at the broken coffin, then hesitantly touched her neck. Blood had started to flow sluggishly from the wound on her forehead. "I... what?" she stammered, panic rising in her voice. "Kengo?"

Ogata Kengo had gone silent with fear, but his trembling gave him away. The eyes of returners were highly sensitive to movement. The gold in Isabela's eyes darkened to a burnished, furious bronze as she glared at him. " _Kengo... seu cabrão... you fucking killed me!_ "

It was the only break they were going to get. Kubota glanced towards the man he'd just shot, then threw his gun aside. After a moment of hesitation, Komiya did the same.

"Well,” Kubota mused, "we aren't shinigami if we don't have a corpse, right?"

"I'm going to rip your dick off and choke you with it, you fucking bastard!"

"Get her in the van, damn it! We don't have time for this shit!"

One of the golden-eyed women, the one who Kubota had shot, clamped a hand over Isabela's mouth while one of the men dragged her out of the coffin. Muffled screams of rage and insults in both Japanese and Portuguese echoed off the cracked concrete.

"Don't worry!" Kubota called with an inappropriately cheerful wave that matched his smile. "We'll take care of things here!" Isabela twisted her body and snarled at the house before her fellow returners managed to force her into the back of the van. The returners would be safely back in one of their enclaves before the local police showed up, and Komiya didn't want to wait around any longer than necessary, either. He definitely didn't feel like explaining how they'd managed to lose a corpse.

Kubota kicked the broken cardboard coffin back into the house and closed the door behind him. "Well now we have a real problem," he sighed, adjusting his glasses. His gun had landed in one of the scattered piles of clothing, and he bent to retrieve it. Komiya hurried to find and re-holster his own weapon.

"That wasn't a real problem!?" Belatedly, Komiya noticed Ogata standing in the kitchen, clutching a knife so tightly that his knuckles had gone white. Isabela would be back for him, and Komiya had a feeling that she'd burn the whole house to the ground before she took the chance of letting _him_ rise.

"Mm. The problem is that somebody already signed for a corpse pickup, and now we don't have a corpse. That's going to mean extra paperwork." Dark eyes glimmered behind the unruly fringe of his hair, and he paused before holstering his gun. "I really hate paperwork."

Ogata didn't even have a chance to scream. The bullet punched a fist-sized hole through his chest, splattering the dingy white kitchen with blood and tissue. A few drops landed on Kubota's outstretched hand.

"Damn it, Kubota-san!"

"Mm?"

"That was fucking loud!" Komiya rubbed his painful, ringing ears. "Give me some warning next time, okay?

"Okay." Kubota rubbed his ear, too, but otherwise seemed unconcerned. There was a faint splatter of crimson on his glasses, which he cleaned with the corner of his jacket. Another reason why Welcomers wore black suits - they hid bloodstains well. Once he settled his glasses back on his nose, he continued. "Now that we have a corpse, we have a delivery to make, don't we?

"...Yeah." Komiya rolled his sleeves. "We'll have to tape this one up good, though. And hey, Kubota-san..."

Kubota tilted his head and squinted. "Hm?"

"...Make sure you grab that guy's wallet."

His bland expression broke into a smile. "Yeah."

 

**Wednesday, September 6th, 1995, 11:45 AM  
317 Expressway, Shibuya Ward**

Ten minutes later, they were driving through the 317 expressway tunnel towards Shinjuku, and the breeze whipping past the windows of the hearse was almost enough to take away the stench of rot and fresh blood. If Komiya kept his foot on the accelerator and ignored traffic signals, they'd still make it to the crematorium before noon.

"I feel like eating ramen," Kubota said after a long, contemplative pause.

"I don't know how the hell you can think about food right now."

"It's lunchtime. Of course I'm going to think about food."

Komiya started to laugh. He laughed until his chest hurt and his eyes burned, and he had to wipe away the tears to see the road in front of them.

"What's so funny?"

"We're alive. That's what's funny."

Kubota smiled one of his unreadable little smiles and patted his pockets until he found his trusty pack of Seven Stars. Even though his cigarette was only half smoked, he lit a second one off its glowing end. _Don't tell me he's seriously going to smoke two at once_ , thought Komiya. Even for a chain-smoker like Kubota, that was too much.

Instead, Kubota offered the lit cigarette to Komiya. "Here. You're out, aren't you?"

"Huh? Y-yeah." Komiya took the cigarette, surprised that Kubota had noticed something like that. He hadn't even said anything about being out. Komiya took a pull of smoke, savoring the taste. Seven Stars were smoother than the cheap crap he usually smoked. "Thanks, man." He grinned back at his partner. "You know, it sure would be crazy if these things ended up killing us."

Kubota closed his eyes. There was still a faint smile on his lips as he took a long drag from his own cigarette, sucking until the embers nearly reached the filter. He exhaled slowly, letting the smoke drift away on the breeze.

"I don't feel alive unless I'm dying."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a long time since the last chapter... I'm writing at Minekura's speed, haha. I made a few little tweaks to the first chapter, too.
> 
> FYI, this first part of this chapter takes place three weeks before the last chapter, and the second part of this chapter takes place two weeks after the first chapter. I'm trying to mimic Wild Adapter's discontinuous style.

**Thursday, August 16th, 1995, 3:45 PM**  
**Izumokai Offices, Shinjuku 3-chome, Shinjuku Ward**

"Sanada-san, I don't think this is...

"Frankly, kid, I don't give a fuck what you think." Sanada took a pull of smoke from his cigarette and let it out in a dismissive sigh. The sticky-sweet scent of his vanilla Ark Royals was enough to make Komiya's nose twitch, but he didn't dare flinch. "If you'd done your job right in the first place," Sanada continued, "I wouldn't have to hire a new employee."

Komiya nodded mutely, eyes averted, and stepped back to stand behind the boss's massive mahogany desk. The desk had originally belonged to an executive at one of the big Tokyo stock trading companies, and it had taken half a dozen Izumokai members to maneuver the wooden behemoth down the emergency stairs of a condemned skyscraper. Even though the Izumokai's third-story offices sat above a karaoke bar and the floors occasionally vibrated to the sound of off-key pop tunes, the grandiose desk brought an imposing presence to the room. Presence was everything in this business, or so Sanada said. But Sanada himself was not a large man, and his flavored cigarettes and slicked-back hair gave him a certain effete appearance that he frequently used to his advantage. Komiya had seen his manicured fingers break a man's neck.

Presence was why Sanada stubbed out his half-finished cigarette in a glass ashtray - while smuggled goods flowed in from outside the Tokyo Exclusion Zone, tobacco was still a luxury item that only a wealthy man would waste. The unpleasantly sweet smoke continued to pervade the room, as Sanada no doubt intended. He reached out to press the intercom button on his desk phone, connecting the office to the receptionist outside. "Send in the new kid."

The new kid was the latest person to respond to the "help wanted" ad posted in the mahjong parlor on the building's ground floor. Komiya knew nothing about him, other than that he was willing to start work immediately. Promises of "excellent compensation" and "no special skills or education required" occasionally lured luckless gamblers into the office of "Izumo Delivery Services," the Izumokai's front company. Most walked right back out as soon as they found out what "Izumo Delivery Services" actually delivered.

The office door creaked open, and Sanada's middle-aged personal secretary paused to give a shallow bow before opening the door fully. She'd been the mama-san of a gay bar in the roughest part of Shinjuku before joining the Izumokai, and Sanada treated her like a trusted lieutenant. "It's Kubota Makoto-san," she announced briskly as a young man stepped through the doorway. "He's here for the interview."

The most noteworthy thing about Kubota Makoto's appearance was his utter lack of noteworthy qualities. He wore a loose button-down shirt, and his dark, unkempt hair fell heavy over eyes that were further hidden behind wire-rimmed glasses. He looked like a high school student. If Komiya had had seen him on the street - and he probably had, given that Kubota apparently frequented the mahjong club on the first floor - he wouldn't have remembered him. Kubota's expression was unreadable. With a poker face like that, he was probably a pretty good gambler... so why was he trying to get a job with the Izumokai?

"Let's not waste my time or yours," began Sanada. There were no chairs for visitors, so Kubota idly shifted from one foot to the other like a delinquent who'd been called in to the principal's office. "You know what kind of business we do here, right?"

"Mm. I heard that the central government in Kyoto had sub-contracted corpse transport to the yakuza. You're Funeral Welcomers."

Komiya grimaced and shook his head in warning, but he didn't dare speak. Sanada always made an effort to present the Izumokai as a legitimate business, and he'd killed people for implying that he was only a second-rate gangster in charge of a small branch office of a larger criminal syndicate. But the boss merely laughed as he tipped back in his leather chair.

"You know, way back in in the old days, the yakuza did more for the common people than all the shoguns and samurai put together. We provided law enforcement, we manned the fire brigade, we made sure the money-lenders were honest. We were practically public servants. The way I see it, the Izumokai is just continuing that tradition of public service. The local government can barely manage trash pickup, so there's no way they can deal with motherfucking zombies."

"...So the rumors are true, then. The dead can rise."

"Some of them do. Most just rot, but the ones that come back aren't human anymore. They're stronger, they're faster, they barely eat, they barely bleed... they're almost immortal. Some people are calling it the next step in evolution. Some people are saying it's demonic possession. All I know is that the government is so afraid of these 'returners' that they're willing to pay a pretty price for every corpse we smoke up."

"Saa."

"But it's easier to kill returners than it is to kill old superstitions," Sanada continued, "so we social outcasts are the only ones willing to handle the dead. You ever seen a dead body, kid?"

"Mm." Kubota gave an insouciant shrug.

"I ain't talking about seeing your grandma's refrigerated carcass covered in makeup to make it look like she's just taking a nap. Some tough guys choke the first time they come face to face with their own mortality."

"Hmm."

"You don't say much, do you? Look, I don't give a fuck about your background. For all I care, you could have killed somebody."

Kubota just smiled. Even his smile was evasive, neither confirming nor denying the accusation.

"...Heh. So you killed somebody?"

"Well, I do play a lot of video games."

Sanada laughed, but Komiya, standing a little behind him, could see the lines at the corners of his eyes grow deeper as his gaze sharpened. "Is this a game to you?"

"I'm getting a bit bored with video games," Kubota answered, at the same time answering nothing. "I prefer a game with human opponents. Hey, do you mind if I smoke?"

"Go right ahead," Sanada agreed with a nod, but a cigarette was dangling from Kubota's lips before the words left his mouth. He lit it with a disposable lighter and sucked in a deep, gratifying lungful of smoke. Sanada snorted to himself. "If you keep smoking them like that, you're going to end up with an expensive little habit. Is that why you're signing up for the Welcomers?"

"Mm. I thought you didn't care about my background."

Sanada actually laughed at that. The dry, harsh sound send a shiver of unease down Komiya's spine.

After the Quake of '85 and the sudden appearance of returners, the Japanese government had established the Tokyo Exclusion Zone. The central wards of the city had been walled off by fences of concrete and razor wire, and JDSF soldiers had been stationed in permanent garrisons surrounding the quarantined area. Anyone who approached the walls was a target... and the soldiers didn't bother to check whether or not their eyes were golden.

Save for a skeleton police force and a few charity-run hospitals and schools, nearly all vital social services had abandoned the city. So had almost everyone else. Those who couldn't afford the permits to leave had stayed behind, along with those who were turned away at the checkpoints: the old, the sick, illegal immigrants, the uneducated, and those with criminal records. The old yakuza syndicates quickly assumed power, fed by a steady supply of weapons and other contraband smuggled in from corrupt government officials on the other side of the Exclusion Zone. The sooner the returners were exterminated, the sooner Tokyo could be reclaimed for the living. Even a small subsidiary organization like the Izumokai could secure a lucrative contract to provide corpse disposal services. Sanada had become a very wealthy man.

The yakuza boss leaned back in his chair, a smirk ghosting over his thin lips. "You're right, kid. I don't care who you are or what you've done. The only thing that matters to me is whether or not I can trust you."

"Oh? Do I look like the trustworthy type?"

"Fuck no." Sanada paused to shake a cigarette from the pack in his pocket. The air was already thick with smoke, and the acrid scent of Kubota's Seven Stars was soon joined by the cloying vanilla of Sanada's cigarettes. "But trust isn't about character. It's about _expectations_. And I want to make sure that my expectations are clear."

He reached out to press a button on the desk phone. The sleek, black plastic device was an obvious import from outside the Exclusion Zone - post-1985 technology could only be obtained through the black market.

"Yes, Sanada-san?" The tinny voice that came through the speaker belonged to the secretary who had escorted Kubota in.

"Send him in."

"...Yes, sir."

After a minute of expectant silence there was the sound of a brief scuffle outside the office door, followed by a thud that shook the door on its frame. The door shuddered open, and the haggard-looking man who had fallen against it nearly collapsed to the floor. He was flanked by two of Sanada's black-clad shinigami, who dragged him the rest of the way to the boss's desk.

The prisoner's bleached-brown hair was lank and greasy and matted with dried blood, and several days’ worth of stubble grew unevenly over his chin. Bright blood seeped from a recently broken nose. His arms were secured behind his back with a plastic zip tie, but he was too weak to struggle against even that flimsy restraint. He was a condemned man, and he knew it. With obvious effort, he raised his head. There were no defiant glares, no last-ditch pleas for mercy. Instead, he stared past Sanada and focused his blackened eyes on the young man who stood behind him.

"K... Komiya..."

"Nagato!!" Komiya tried to bite back his own desperate cry, but it was too late. He expected disapproval from Sanada, but the older man merely looked amused.

"Indeed. Nagato Shouichi, former leader of my Funeral Welcomers." Sanada nodded to the two shinigami and continued. "Tape his mouth and leave. Komiya-kun, don't make me tape yours too." Most Welcomers habitually kept a roll of duct tape around their wrists for securing coffin lids, so the two underlings quickly gagged their prisoner as he struggled to breathe through blood and snot. Then they were gone, and an unsupported Nagato slumped on his knees.

Sanada took a draw from his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke, but the sweet vanilla cigarette dangling from his fingertips had taken on a harsh and chemical undertone. "You were always good at your job, Nagato-kun. That's why I brought you in to train your new replacement. Nagato-kun, meet Kubota Makoto."

Kubota nodded with a vague and pleasant smile, as if there was nothing out of the ordinary about the introduction.

"Komiya-kun, why don't you tell him what happened to Nagato? He was your partner, after all."

Komiya gulped a mouthful of air, belatedly realizing that he hadn't taken a breath since Nagato called his name. The heavy smoke did little to ease the cold burn of pain in his chest.

What happened to Nagato?

Where was he supposed to _start_?

When he'd first met Nagato in high school? When Nagato had taught him how to throw a punch and how to shoplift cigarettes? When Nagato had beaten the shit out of a guy who'd called Komiya's mother a whore? When they'd dropped out of school together in senior year and joined the Izumokai?

"He... he betrayed Sanada-san," Komiya said lamely, hanging his head low so he wouldn't have to meet Nagato's helpless gaze. "He... he took a bribe from the returners."

"That's right, Sanada interjected. "He turned on me, after everything I'd done for him. My driver was killed when those zombie bastards attacked. Do you know how hard it is to get bloodstains out of the front seat of a Mercedes? Almost as hard as getting a new Mercedes into the Exclusion Zone in the first place."

Nagato had wanted out of the Exclusion Zone, but the necessary bribes to border guards and government officials could cost millions of yen. There were few legitimate ways to make money within the dying city... but the Funeral Welcomers promised easy cash to anyone who could overcome the traditional Japanese taboos surrounding death. Even before the Quake, those who handled the dead were shunned as _burakumin_ : spiritually tainted outcasts whose families carried the weight of sin for generations. They were segregated into rural villages and urban slums, where the yakuza embraced them when no one else would. The businesses of crime and death had been intertwined for so long that seventy percent of yakuza members could claim burakumin ancestry. The Exclusion Zone had been established to protect the rest of Japan from the threat of returners, but it had effectively imprisoned those touched by death together with the undead.

But Nagato had fallen in love with a girl, and even his relatively lucrative job with the Izumokai wouldn't buy bribes for both of them. He'd taken money from a gang of returners in exchange for arranging a hit on Sanada. The old man had survived more sophisticated schemes, though, and it hadn't taken him long to figure out who set him up.

 _Damn it, Nagato._ Komiya clenched his fists, trying to quell the helpless shaking. _Why did you have to be so damned stupid? None of us are ever going to make it out of this place._

_A shinigami can't escape death._

"Like I said, Kubota-kun, trust is all about expectations," Sanada drawled. Smiling faintly, the yakuza boss reached into his top desk drawer and pulled out a gun. It was a heavier model than the one that he always wore holstered under his suit jacket, but he handled it with comfortable ease. He set it on the desk and turned the grip towards Kubota. "So I want you to trust me, too. I want you to know exactly what to expect if you fuck up." Nagato's eyes widened in desperate fear, but whatever words he tried to speak were muffled by the tape covering his mouth. "Shoot him."

There was nothing Komiya could do. He knew that. Nagato had been a dead man the moment he turned on Sanada. And yet...

And yet he'd been a partner. A friend. A brother.

"S-Sanada-san, wait..."

Sanada's cool, reptilian gaze slid towards Komiya, pinning him with a sharp glare. "Shut the fuck up, kid. You should have been the one doing this, Komiya-kun, but you've always been a spineless coward. If I thought you were anything better than that, you'd be on the floor next to your stupid friend." Sanada's face split into a mocking smirk. "You want to prove me wrong? Stand against me, and I'll make you kneel..."

The sudden crack of a gunshot was followed by absolute silence. Even Nagato's body was still for a moment before it collapsed lifelessly to the ground. The left side of his head was missing, and bloody clumps of tissue spattered the wall of Sanada's office. A few drops of blood had sprayed back onto Kubota's white shirt, but he seemed unperturbed by the gore as he rubbed his ear.

"Ah. That was louder than I expected."

"Not like the video games, huh?" Sanada leaned back in his chair and laughed, ignoring Komiya as his gasping breaths threatened to turn to sobs.

"Saa," Kubota agreed affably.

 _What kind of monster is he?_ Komiya's blood rushed through his veins as Nagato's seeped into the carpet. _Or are we all monsters?_

"Well, kid, it looks like a vacancy just opened up. You can be the new leader of the Izumokai junior division." Sanada wiped blood splatter from his desk with a pocket handkerchief. "Now get this shit out of my office and take it to the crematorium. They don't usually come back after you shoot them in the head, but when they do, it's fucking disgusting. Welcome to the Welcomers."

Kubota nodded, lighting a fresh cigarette. Sanada leaned back in his chair and tossed the bloodied handkerchief aside.

"Oi, Komiya-kun. This kid's your new partner. Try to keep this one alive."

 

 **Saturday, September 23rd, 1995, 5:15 PM**  
**Mejiro Street, Zoshigaya 2-chome, Toshima Ward**

"Damn it, Kubota-san, put that lighter away!" The hearse abruptly swerved as Komiya took a hand off the wheel and jerked his thumb towards the back, where two military-issue steel jerry cans clanged noisily in the cargo area along with several old tires. "We've got forty liters of gasoline in the back! Are you trying to blow us up!?"

Kubota chewed peevishly on his unlit cigarette, but tucked the lighter back into his pocket. "Tch. This is troublesome."

Komiya couldn't agree more. Zoshigaya was an old neighborhood of narrow streets and dilapidated wooden temples. The afternoon sun cast long, unsettling shadows, and Komiya feared that a wrong turn could send them heading towards the large public cemetery that had been built in the 19th century when Zoshigaya was on the outskirts of a much smaller Tokyo. The Toshima area was hit hard in the Quake, so electrical power had never been restored and many streets were still choked with the debris of crumbling homes. "Yeah, I don't want to be this close to Ikebukuro when it gets dark. Let's make this quick."

Ikebukuro was returner territory. With their golden, inhuman eyes, they didn't seem to mind the lack of electric light, and their supernatural agility allowed them to move easily through the ruins of what had once been a thriving entertainment district. Ikebukuro was an exclusion zone within the Exclusion Zone, and Zoshigaya's cemetery unofficially marked its southeast border.

No one knew how many returners lived in abandoned enclaves or walked secretly among the living, but Komiya didn't think it could be more than a few thousand. Even before the government mandated immediate cremation of the dead, only a tiny fraction of the dead had risen in the aftermath of the Quake's devastation. The phenomenon only seemed to affect those who died in central Tokyo. Komiya remembered seeing the bodies of friends laid out in rows in the elementary school gymnasium back in ’85, and none of _them_ had come back. Some people said that returners were cursed, while others struggled for scientific explanations as to why the dead weren’t staying dead. The only consistent factor seemed to be that nearly all of those who returned had suffered a violent death. Everything from genetic mutations to a zombie virus to sorcery to the impending apocalypse had been suggested, but as far as Komiya could tell, there was little logic to who returned and who didn’t.

Short of committing murder, the only way for returners to increase their meager numbers was to seize fresh corpses and hope for one in a hundred to rise. Naturally, this left them with a surplus of dead who failed to return. They normally scavenged for wood from old buildings to burn the corpses, but after several days of unseasonably heavy rain, the city was thoroughly waterlogged. So, they’d piled their dead in the courtyard of an old temple on the edge of their territory and left them for the Welcomers.

Komiya turned the hearse down a claustrophobic alley – the main road was blocked by the remains of a collapsed office building – and headed towards the temple. They passed an old kindergarten whose playground was choked with ten years of weeds and small trees, and shops whose shattered windows displayed an assortment of broken teacups and trinkets. Stray cats prowled streets devoid of human life.

“So how do we know it’s not a trap?” asked Kubota as they drove through what was left of the temple gate. The courtyard’s stones were covered in scraggly weeds, but thanks to past burns it wasn’t completely impassable.

“We don’t.”   A makeshift funeral pyre of scrap wood and cardboard had been hastily constructed above roughly a dozen blanket-wrapped bodies. The smell was thick and nauseating, so Komiya breathed through his mouth and dug through the hearse’s change tray until he found a few mint candies. “But the returners are actually pretty respectful to the dead... I guess because they’re technically dead themselves. They mourn for the people who don’t come back.”

“Huh.” Kubota reflexively reached for his lighter as soon as they stepped out of the hearse, then put it away with a grimace when he remembered the gas cans in the cargo area. “I guess that explains it.”

“Explains what?” Komiya went around the back of the old station wagon and popped the hatchback. They’d brought a few tires as fuel in addition to the gas, so he tossed them onto the pyre. Even though it had rained last night, somebody had been back to top off the pile with dry cardboard and wooden planks from inside the temple. Komiya screwed the cap off one of the jerry cans and began sloshing gasoline onto the base of the pyre. Kubota grabbed the other can and did the same.

“Why they’re watching us.”

“What!?” Now he could imagine dozens of golden eyes watching them. “How do you know!?”

“I’ve just got a feeling,” Kubota answered with a shrug. “I don’t think it’s more than one or two of them, though.” He left a long trail of gasoline away from the pyre and back to the hearse so they could light it from a safe distance. Finally, he lit a cigarette and took a deep drag to satisfy his nicotine craving before dropping the rest of it in the gas. A line of fire snaked its way back to the pyre and exploded in bright, hot flames.

“...Do you ever wonder why they come back?” Komiya asked, watching acrid black smoke rise from the burning tires.

Kubota merely shrugged. In the few weeks that they’d been partners, it hadn’t gotten any easier to make conversation with Kubota Makoto, but Komiya was learning to read the apathetic gestures and noncommittal comments. Or at least he thought he was. From the way Kubota’s dark eyes focused on the flames, maybe he was wondering the same thing.

“Some people say it’s because they have unfinished business, like ghosts, and some people think it’s because they’re cursed...”

“Hm.” Kubota was already lighting a new cigarette. “Which do you think it is?”

“Well...” Komiya hesitated before answering. “This is going to sound stupid, but... when the Quake hit, I felt something _break_. I could feel it in here,” he said, rubbing his chest uncomfortably. “It was like the whole world snapped in half, and when the pieces came back together, they didn’t quite fit.”

“Huh.”

“My mom felt it too,” he added defensively. “She felt it even before the Quake. She started mumbling to herself about life and death... the doctor said she was having a mental breakdown, but I think she knew that something was coming. She said that...” Komiya trailed off, embarrassed. “Never mind. You probably think I’m crazy too.”

“I felt it too.” Kubota breathed out a sigh of smoke. “Something broke that day. Or maybe something was broken all along.”

Komiya gave him an uncertain look, then forced a shrug. “Who knows. I mean, you couldn’t have been more than 9 or 10 when it happened.”

“7, actually.”

“Wait, what!? You’re 17!? You should still be in school, you delinquent brat! Give me those cigarettes!” He made a grab for the pack, but Kubota was faster than his perpetually sleepy expression would suggest.

“Saa. Should I call you Komiya-sempai, then?”

“Hell no, I’m only 19. It’s not that big of a deal.” Technically, Kubota was the leader of the Izumokai youth division, so he outranked Komiya despite their difference in age. Kubota didn’t seem to care much about social hierarchy, though.   “Let’s get out of here,” he sighed. Fueled by gasoline, the funeral pyre was still burning strong and even the damp wood had started to smolder. “This place stinks.”

“Mm. Worst barbeque ever.” Kubota cracked a smile.

“...You are so weird. Come on, let’s go.”

“Wait...!” A female voice called out to them. Komiya jolted to full attention – there shouldn’t have been anybody in this part of the city. Nobody alive, anyway. Kubota had said they were being watched... His hand went to the Beretta under his jacket, drawing jerkily.

The returner woman approached them slowly, hands raised. Her golden eyes almost glowed against her dark skin, and she wore a fashionable fur-trimmed leather jacket. “It’s me,” she said quickly, keeping her hands up. “From the other day...”

After a moment, Komiya remembered her name and lowered his gun. Kubota had never flinched; his gun was still holstered. “Isabela!?”

“Yeah. I just... I just wanted to thank you.” She twirled a lock of long, wavy hair around her finger.

“For what?”

“For killing my asshole boyfriend. For giving a damn about some foreign girl.”

Komiya scratched his head sheepishly. She must have gone back to the house and seen the blood splatter all over the kitchen. “Oh, uh, it was Kubota-san who shot him...”

“I took his wallet, too,” Kubota added casually. The half-Brazilian woman broke into a grin.

“Good. Buy yourselves some suits that actually fit.”

“The clients don’t usually notice.”

“I guess not,” she laughed. “You know, for shinigami, you guys aren’t bad.” Isabela gave Kubota a flirtatious wink that he predictably failed to notice, or at least pretended not to notice. There was a small smile at the corner of his mouth that Komiya wouldn’t have noticed even a week ago. Komiya felt himself smiling too.

Kubota Makoto had killed his best friend. And now... Kubota Makoto was the closest thing he had to a friend.

_Everything’s all mixed up._

He remembered his mother’s words from a decade ago, from one of the nights when she’d hold him tightly in their little apartment in Sanya and whisper words that smelled like cheap liquor. She’d grown erratic in the months before the Quake, muttering to herself constantly and hearing things that no one else could hear.

_Something’s broken in the world, baby. The clean and the unclean... the living and the dead..._

He remembered feeling that same unease and skipping school on the morning of the Quake. He remembered coming back and finding that his school had collapsed into rubble, and that most of his classmates were dead.

_Everything’s all mixed up._

Kubota caught his smile and seemed surprised for a moment, then returned the gesture. Isabela laughed, and Komiya found himself laughing too, even though he hadn’t heard what they were talking about. A thick line of black smoke rose from the funeral pyre, bisecting the red-tinged evening sky.

_Something bad is going to happen._

_Something’s broken._

 

 


End file.
